


Above White Noise

by patster223



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials, Because Stick is canonically a jackass, Emotional Abuse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-03-31 21:18:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3993220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patster223/pseuds/patster223
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. He’s not a cliché. He knows what it looks like, a blind guy having a bat daemon, but-</p><p>They are <em>not</em> a cliché. </p><p>His Dark Materials AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Above White Noise

**Author's Note:**

> You don't need to be familiar with His Dark Materials to read this, but here's a quick primer for those who want one: Every person in this universe has a daemon, or an animal who is a physical representation of their soul. Daemons can change shape in childhood, but "settle" or choose just one form when their human matures. Daemons have to stay physically close to their human, unless they go through a painful, dubious process called separation.
> 
> Thanks to [the-oxford-english-fangeek](http://the-oxford-english-fangeek.tumblr.com/) for thinking of their daemons (especially Foggy's) with me and for betaing this :)

“So, come on: do you get a lot of jokes about it?”

Matt snorts into his third drink of the night. His fourth drink? He can sense how many bottles are on the table, he can smell which ones belong to him and which ones belong to Foggy – but he’s getting a bit too drunk to actually make _sense_ of this information.

“Oh yeah,” Matt says with a grin. “Blind guy with a bat daemon? People can’t resist.”

Foggy laughs. It’s the kind of boisterous, uncontrollable giggle where he slaps at the table with his hands, nearly knocking over their beer bottles. That’s not even Foggy’s drunk laughter either – that’s just how he _laughs._ His amusement just bubbles over until Matt can’t help but be consumed with giggles himself.

“It’s not that funny,” Fallon says mildly from her perch on Matt’s shoulder. When she shifts, the soft velvet of her ears brushes against Matt’s neck. “Bat’s aren’t even blind.”

Foggy’s daemon cocks her head. “Really?”

Fallon shifts to _look_ right at Piritta, as if to prove it. “It’s a myth,” she sighs.

The warm weight of Fallon’s body leaves Matt’s shoulder when she flies down to perch on Piritta instead. Matt shakes his head. For all Fallon pretends to be offended at Piritta’s quips, she can never resist burying her head in the Irish wolfhound’s fur.

Matt thinks that it’s a texture thing. It often is, with him and Fallon.

“A myth, huh?” Foggy muses. Finally, he slaps the table again, and one bottle actually _does_ fall off this time. “I can’t believe this. My high school biology teacher _lied_ to me! We need to sue him, Matt.”

Matt laughs at the unsteady finger Foggy waves in his face. “For _what_? I don’t think being a bad biology teacher is a crime, Foggy.”

“Negligence! Misinformation! Not…knowing enough shit about bats, I don’t know! Doesn’t matter -- we’ll figure that out later. Because once we graduate, we’re going to right this wrong,” Foggy says grandly. “It’ll be our first act of justice on behalf of the people of Hell’s Kitchen.”

The air shifts as Fallon stills, then erupts in sound and movement when she returns to her spot on Matt’s shoulder. Piritta cocks her head at them, and Matt tries to plaster a smile on his face.

It’s easy enough not to be a maudlin drunk around Foggy, but Matt still manages to slip up – especially in times like this. When the sirens have been coming one too many every night, and all Matt can think about is what he _hasn’t_ done for the people of Hell’s Kitchen.

“So,” Foggy says casually, grabbing at another beer. It smells like one of Matt’s bottles, but Foggy doesn’t seem to notice the accidental theft. “Couldn’t help but notice you’re making your ‘time to get sad drunk and listen to torts textbooks in the dark’ face, and I gotta say – not gonna happen. This is a happy drunk _only_ zone, Murdock.”

“What’s sad about listening to torts textbook in the dark? It’s not like we care if it’s dark,” he says, gesturing to Fallon and himself.

“You’re still drunk listening to a torts textbook, buddy. It’s depressing as hell.”

“Oh yeah? And what do you suggest as an alternative, counselor?” Matt says, feeling his lips stretch into a smile despite himself. He can hear Foggy reaching down to scratch behind Piritta’s ears, hear him humming into his – _Matt’s_ – beer bottle.

“We toast!” Foggy decides. “To suing bad bio teachers! To suing ableist assholes who make fun of other people’s daemons! To- to-”

“To Nelson and Murdock,” Matt supplies, finding one of Foggy’s bottles and raising it for Foggy to clink. Foggy does so, enthusiastically and messily, but Matt can’t bring himself to mind the sticky beer dripping onto his sleeves.

“To Nelson and Murdock,” Foggy says.

Matt may not be able to see Foggy’s smile, but it has a sound. It overflows into Foggy’s words to the point where it seems like a tangible thing, like Matt should be able to sense the shape Foggy’s smile makes in space.

 

*** 

 

Sometimes Matt wonders what would happen if he told Foggy the truth.

“He would accept us,” Fallon says.

They’re on a roof, listening to the overwhelming tide of Hell’s Kitchen, waiting for sounds of wrongdoing to call them to action.

Matt sighs. “It’s not as simple as that.”

“You’re a lawyer who wears a mask at night so he can beat people up. Nothing is simple anymore.” Fallon doesn’t say it with any judgment – not when she sleeps just as soundly after a patrol as Matt does. She just says it because it’s the truth.

Nothing _is_ simple anymore. Hasn’t been for a while now.

Matt holds her in his hands, tracing the length of her wing membrane with his fingertip. He wants to press her close and feel her light heartbeat flutter against his cheek – if only so that he can pretend that they’re just any other person and their daemon.

“It’s not just the mask,” Matt whispers. “What about- what about us? What would he think if he found out?”

Fallon doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t need to. Matt doesn’t need to be able to hear her rushing heartbeat to know her uncertainty -- _their_ uncertainty.

And then a cry for help reaches for them across four city blocks and the silence – as much as such a thing even exists to their ears – is broken. Fallon takes to the sky, Matt takes to the rooftops, and they do what they are called to do.

 

***

 

Matt is separated from his daemon at the age of 12.

He knows such a thing wasn’t always unheard of. In the days of old, witches ritually separated themselves from their daemons. They entered a barren land where their daemon could not follow, and the usual feet that a daemon and human could be apart from each other stretched to miles and miles.

But witches haven’t existed for a very long time, and right now, all Matt can think about are his history textbooks: the watered down ones that pointedly _don’t_ talk about how separation was – and in some places _is_ – used as a form of torture.

“Stop shaking,” Stick orders.

“I’m not.”

The dull thump of Stick’s cane hitting Matt’s chest echoes in his ears. When they fight, it’s more of a sharp crack, one that’s loud enough for Matt to feel in his chest. But right not they’re at a bus stop, in public, and Stick isn’t trying to teach Matt a lesson – he’s just trying to get his attention.

“Stop shaking, and stop acting like I can’t see through your bullshit,” Stick says.

Matt nods. He’s _trying_ to control his trembling limbs, he really is – but he can’t. The bond between him and Fallon is stretched like an old rubber band. Even though they’re only a block away from each other, Matt already feels like he’s about to snap.

Sweat beads against his forehead, despite the coolness of the day. In the basement where Fallon is waiting, she _whimpers,_ tries to stop shaking too – Matt can still hear her, even from here.

He thinks that he’d be able to sense her anxiety even without his abilities. But with them, her distress screams in his mind like an air horn.

Matt swallows heavily, presses his hands against his ears. “Do we really have to do this?”

Another dull thump of the cane against Matt’s chest.

“What rules your body?” Stick reminds him.

“M-my mind.”

“What’s your strongest weapon?”

“My body.”

“Don’t see any mention of daemons in there,” Stick sniffs.

“Fallon is a part of my body,” Matt says. Whether or not it’s actually true, it _feels_ true. When Matt is bedridden with a migraine, it’s _Fallon_ who can hardly fly. When Fallon’s wing was clipped by a door last month, pain had crept like fire through _Matt’s_ bones.

“Daemons are a part of the _soul,_ ” Stick corrects him. “You see me carrying my soul around with me?”

“No.”

“No. Because it’s a weakness, Matty. Sure, other people might like to have their cat or dog or _whatever_ daemon around to keep their lonely asses company, but here’s the truth: having your soul right beside is a _vulnerability._ Especially for a warrior.”

 _I am a warrior,_ Matt thinks to himself. _I am a warrior._ It becomes his mantra as he boards the bus, as it begins to move and he feels himself being _ripped, torn_ from Fallon. He repeats it over and over again as their bond stretches, bends, _burns_ until – minutes later? hours? – it finally snaps.

 

***

 

“Earth to Murdock.”

“Mmm?”

Foggy throws a pencil at his chest. Matt pretends to startle when it hits him.

“Foggy,” Karen scolds him, but her voice is filled with laughter. Her canary daemon huffs from his place on Piritta’s head, and gives her a light peck.

“What, he needs the wake-up call! You’re spacing out, man,” Foggy says to him. “I know you think you’ve got a free pass to daydream with those glasses, but it’s actually _pretty_ easy to tell when you’ve stopped reading something.”

Matt realizes that his fingers have been resting at the top of the same page for who knows how long. He abandons the braille to reach out for Fallon, but at some point during his daydreaming she’d joined Piritta and Darwin on the floor.

He frowns, puts his hand back on the page. “Sorry,” he says absently. “Must have zoned out.”

“I’ll say,” Foggy says. “Thinking about the tenement case?”

Matt shakes his head. Mere hours of sleep combined with hours more of pouring over legal documents means that exhaustion is dragging at Matt’s very core. When he moves, every stitch in his side shifts with him, dragging at his skin. But that’s not what has his thoughts feeling hazy and unreachable right now.

It’s that he didn’t even notice that Fallon had moved.

 _She’s your daemon_ , he chastises himself. _You should have noticed._

Matt sighs. It’s one of those days when they can barely remembered to act like they’re not separated. When their senses don’t even seem _compatible_ – when Fallon’s unrelenting eyesight makes Matt grind his teeth, and when Fallon can’t comprehend how the stench of Foggy’s Doritos could be giving him a headache.

It’s been a rough week.

“Just feeling distracted, Foggy” Matt says. “Don’t worry about it.”

Fallon’s ears twitch -- rather noticeably, Matt thinks in irritation. He can more or less conceal his true nature, but separated or not, Fallon _is_ his nature, is everything inside him.

Piritta notices, of course, and will not stand for Fallon’s sudden moodiness. She noses at Darwin and Fallon until they obediently settle themselves on her paws. She nuzzles at both of the small daemons’ heads before giving them each a long, affectionate lick.

“She’s going to mess up Darwin’s feathers,” Karen says. Matt can hear the muscles contract in her face as she smiles.

“And Fallon’s fur,” Matt adds, but it’s not really a complaint. It’s no secret that Fallon _loves_ Piritta’s attention. Fallon’s contented humming is probably audible even to Foggy and Karen’s ears.

Foggy shrugs. “Sorry, guys, but Ritta and I are affection _machines._ We just can’t be stopped.”

Matt’s closes his eyes, expands his senses. Tries to feel out his connection to Fallon so that he can absorb some of the comfort washing over her from Piritta’s ministrations.

But even though it’s right _there_ , Matt can’t conceptualize that comfort. He doesn’t _know_ how Piritta’s fur feels against Fallon right now. Fallon had tried describing it to him once, but ordinary language can’t explain how Matt experiences the world. Words like ‘soft’ and ‘warm’ only break at the surface of what he can feel.

Matt tries to listen to Fallon’s heartbeat, but the cacophony of the city washes over him instead. He shakes his head. It’s time to get back to work. He runs his fingers over the cool bumps of braille, and plans out what his next step is going to be regarding the Russians.

 

***

 

Claire’s daemon is a greyhound, which, of course he is. Fallon’s always had a thing for dogs.

When he comes to on Claire’s couch, Fallon is on his chest. She is, of course, silent in the face of the greyhound daemon’s questioning. But her head is tilted toward the daemon. Too small of an action to be significant to anyone else, but Matt knows what it means: she’s _intrigued._

 _Great,_ he thinks, already resigning himself to staying on this couch for the foreseeable future.

Then Claire gives her assessment of him, and says, “Your eyes are non-responsive to light and Sav couldn’t smell a daemon on you until _she-_ ” she nods to Fallon “-flew in through the window. Which isn’t freaking out the hell out, so either you’re blind and separated, or in way worse shape than I thought-”

And Matt can start to see what Fallon is so intrigued by. Matt’s never told a single person that he’s separated. For someone to make that conclusion so easily, in such a matter-of-fact way, must be what startles him into trusting her.

Well, that and the blood loss.

Claire meets him with honest skepticism -- but with no alarm. None of the fear that other people display when the word _separation_ is uttered. Saverio doesn’t respond to the thought as other daemons do, doesn’t guard himself when he sees Fallon stray a bit too far from Matt.

Maybe that’s why, after Claire finally knows his and Fallon’s names, he actually responds when she asks the inevitable question: “What’s it like to be separated?”

Matt winces as Claire threads another stitch in his side. He reaches slightly for Fallon, only to remember that she holed up in his bedroom to avoid the – apparently -- bright light of the billboard.

“What do you want to know?” Matt says. “I’m sure you’ve heard the stories.”

“Yeah, that it hurts,” Claire says. She pauses her stitching for a second. “Maybe that’s why you can take all these beatings like they’re just walks in the park.”

“Compared to separation, they are,” Matt says simply.

“I’ll bet,” Claire says. “But that’s not what I meant to ask. I meant more day-to-day, what’s it like?”

Matt shrugs. “For the most part, it’s freeing. We like that we can travel independently of one another. We’re not as reliant on each other as other people are with their daemons. It allows for more control.”

“Who would’ve pegged you as someone who likes control?” Claire mutters under her breath -- well aware that he can hear her. “You said ‘for the most part.’”

“Separated or not, we’re still two parts of a whole, just like you and Sav,” Matt says, nodding to the greyhound resting behind her. “Being separated really doesn’t change much. But…it’s still something you feel sometimes.”

“And what does that feel like?”

Matt bites his lip, thinks it over. He strains his ears to hear what Fallon’s doing, but only senses the rustle of her ears as she does the same. He’s never talked about their separation to anyone but her – he realizes that she’s curious as to how he’ll articulate the experience.

“It’s like…listening to a radio,” he decides.

Claire doesn’t narrate the roll of her eyes, but it’s audible in her voice when she says, “World on fire, listening to a radio – sure you’re not a poet?”

“There aren’t literal words to describe these things,” Matt sighs. “Metaphors are-”

“Confusing?”

“Confusing, yes, but the best I can do.” Matt laughs, despite himself. He can hear the slide of Claire’s lips as she smiles at him.

“Okay, then, describe it to me. It’s like you’re listening to a radio…”

“It’s like you’re listening to the radio,” Matt says. “You like this station. They always play the music you like. But your radio’s batteries are dying, so you keep getting intermittent static.”

“Sounds irritating.”

“Not really. You can still hear the music, and the radio still works. And after a while, you get used to the static. It’s even calming sometimes. But…after years of that, you start to wonder if you’re _supposed_ to find it calming. You start to wonder what’s worse: that your music keeps getting interrupted? Or…that you’ve become so used to it that you don’t even notice the white noise anymore.”

“They both sound pretty shitty,” Claire says softly.

Fallon enters the room again. Matt welcomes the warm weight of her body as she perches herself on his lap. He absently pats her head, and listens to the sounds of Claire packing up her first aid kit, to the static hum of the city outside of his window.

“It’s just how we are,” he says finally.

 

***

 

“I told you not to bring your daemon today,” Stick says. “We’re concentrating on training your _body._ When we move on to meditation, she can return.”

“Yeah, I know I’m not supposed to bring her -- but Fallon settled yesterday!” Matt says proudly. His hands shake as he cradles his newly-settled bat daemon in his hands.

“Oh yeah?” Stick says. He takes a step closer to them, cocks his head. “And where is she? Because surely she’s not that small little thing you’ve got in your hands.”

Matt holds Fallon closer to his chest. “She’s not small. Brown long-eared bat’s ears are almost as big as the rest of their body.”

“Then maybe _she_ can hear what I’m saying, since I can’t seem to get through to you: a bat isn’t a warrior’s daemon.”

Matt bristles. “She can fight! She has teeth, and claws, and-”

“And wings as thin as tissue paper,” Stick says. “It’s not just the fighting, Matty. Like I said, you don’t want your daemon fighting no matter what it is. No, the problem is that she’s conspicuous.”

“Conspicuous?” Fallon whispers, trembling in his hands.

Matt blinks. Fallon likes Stick -- likes how he brought them back to life after the accident -- but without another daemon to interact with, she’d never paid him much attention. This is the first time she’s ever addressed him.

If Stick is surprised to hear Fallon speak, he doesn’t act like it. He just keeps talking to Matt.

“You’re a blind man with a bat daemon, kid. The rest of the world will think you’re a cliché – and they’ll be right. She’s only going to draw attention to you. And attention only ever gets you in trouble.”

Fallon’s shrinks under Stick’s words, drawing her wings tightly around her new body. Matt wishes he could reclaim the surging joy they’d felt upon realizing that she’d finally chosen a form.

“We just- we just settled like this,” Matt says softly.

“I know. And there’s nothing for it now. So, come on: put her aside and let’s see if you can land a hit on an old man.”

Fallon’s bitterness and rage rises up in Matt’s throat like bile. He lets their anger strike a spark in them, a flame that keeps his limbs moving past exhaustion, that turns his body into a weapon and his sticks into extensions of his hands.

Minutes later, Stick has Matt in a hold that he can’t break no matter how hard he tries.

A month later, Stick crushes Matt’s bracelet in his hand and leaves. And once more, Matt is left with only Fallon.

 

***

 

Matt doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. He’s not a cliché.

He knows what it looks like, a blind guy having a bat daemon, but-

They are _not_ a cliché.

Sometimes people make jokes about it. Sometimes people pointedly chose not to comment on it at all, and their air of self-congratulations reeks in Matt’s nose nearly as badly as the jokes do.

Foggy’s one of the few people who doesn’t make Matt feel weird about it. But Foggy also doesn’t know the whole truth: that Matt and Fallon are separated, that they must fly and run independently from one another in order to do what they do.

No, Foggy doesn’t _really_ understand. Neither did Stick, in the end.

It’s just…

Was it really so wrong to want a daemon who perceived the world like you did? Was it wrong to cry in relief when Fallon settled on a form that relied on smells and sounds and the shapes objects made in space as much as Matt did?

Is _that_ really such a cliché?

 

***

 

“He’s not a nut job.”

“Karen, you saw that footage. The guy doesn’t have a _daemon_ ,” Foggy says.

It’s the day after the bombings. The more cautious news stations aren’t sure what to do with the lack of daemon in the surveillance footage. But the more zealous ones have already reached the same conclusion Foggy has: that the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen is a violent, daemonless terrorist.

Fallon’s wings shake, and cold, wet anger twists Matt’s stomach into knots.

“Maybe he has a small daemon,” Karen says. “Hell, _Darwin_ is probably too small to show up on those crappy cameras, let alone something even smaller.”

Foggy shakes his head. “You think he’s taking punches and doing those flips with a daemon in his pocket? No way.”

“Then- then maybe he’s separated-”

“Which only gives credence to my nut job theory!” Foggy exclaims. “You know who gets separated from their daemons? Witches and sociopaths. Now, if I were a betting man-”

“Which you are,” Piritta says from the floor.

“ _If_ I were a betting man _,_ then I’d bet that this guy? Total sociopath. He’d have to be, to blow up all those buildings.”

Fallon hunches in on herself from where she rests on Matt’s shoulder. Her claws scrape at the fabric of his suit. Matt frowns, wishing she could be more subtle about her distress – but to tell the truth, Matt’s not doing much better. He can hardly make out braille for all his fingers tremble.

Karen’s hair brushes against her shoulder as she turns to face him. “Come on, Matt, what do you think?”

What does he think? He thinks that Foggy’s words send an ache through his chest sharper than any damage Stick ever dealt out. He thinks that those words may be _choking_ him, clogging his throat just as the dust and rubble did when he and Vladimir crashed through the floor.

 _Sociopath. Daemonless._ The words burn on his skin as if they’ve been branded there.

Matt forces out an answer, and thankfully they soon move onto other topics. Or Foggy and Karen do -- Matt can barely hear what they’re saying over the chaos of the city that screams in his ears.

 _I’m not a sociopath. I am not the devil inside me._ The words ring small and timid in his head, and even Fallon’s comforting nip cannot give them strength.

 

***

 

“What if he’s right?” Matt says, when they’re on a rooftop again.

Despite the fact that they are one being – one soul – Matt and Fallon don’t discuss their doubts often. It’s only up here, with the night air biting at his lips and her wings, that they finally open up.

Matt’s not sure if this kind of reticence is typical for most people and their daemons. Maybe it’s just Matt’s Catholic stoicism. Maybe the separation took more strongly than they thought it did.

Or maybe he really is just a sociopath.

“No we’re _not_ ,” Fallon says sharply. She lands in his outstretched hands, and he reflexively strokes the bone of her wing. “We do what’s right. We help people. Would a sociopath do that?”

“Would someone who’s not a sociopath enjoy it this much?” Matt wonders.

“Claire and Sav don’t think we enjoy it.”

Matt snorts. “You like dog daemons too much, Fallon.”

“So?”

“Dog daemons don’t have good judgment. They trust people too much.”

“Maybe I like being trusted. Most people don’t trust bat daemons, Matt,” Fallon sighs. “Besides, dog daemons are so soft…”

The texture thing again. He really needs to buy some more stim toys, for both himself and Fallon. Before they start mooning over every mammalian daemon they know.

Matt cocks his head. He can hear Owlsley’s car hums to life down the block, can smell the thrumming oil. “Stay here,” he says to Fallon.

Fallon doesn’t have the facial structure necessary to frown, and even if she did, Matt wouldn’t be able to see it. Nonetheless, her uncertainty radiates off her in waves. “Are you sure? Even after last time? What if there’s another explosion and I’m not there again?”

“Then I would be thankful. They _can’t_ find you, Fallon, they can’t-” Matt shakes his head. If Fallon had been with him during the bombing, she almost certainly would have gotten hurt. And then _anyone_ could have found her while he’d been unconscious.

Fallon nods, and takes to the sky. “Then I’ll be lookout,” she calls down.

Matt smiles, letting the sound of her beating wings fill his ears before he jumps down to the adjacent rooftop.

Some people think that separation is inherently an act of trauma. That the stretching of a bond can result in nothing more than the splintering of the soul.

Or the formation of a sociopath.

Matt tries not to believe that, tries not to think about the devil inside him. And on nights like these, he succeeds. He forgets about the unrelenting stigma surrounding separation, the burning white noise that will sometimes fill his heart – all he hears is Fallon’s heartbeat rushing in his ears.

He wishes those people – the ones who theorize about separation without even knowing what it _is,_ how it _feels_ – could see him now, as he sprints across rooftops while Fallon circles him from far above.

 

***

 

“Is it nice having a daemon that can fly?”

Matt raises an eyebrow. He listens for the crisp, paper-like flutter of Fallon’s wings as she circles the room. After a week spent in a dorm room, cramming for finals, Matt is antsy – hence, _Fallon_ is antsy. Hence the borderline neurotic flying.

“I guess. It’s not like she can fly very far,” Matt lies with a shrug.

“Huh. I guess that’s true,” Foggy says. “I mean, obviously I’m happy with how Ritta settled – women love dog daemons, Matt, you have _no_ idea – but I’ve always wondered. We never really tried out birds much, back when Ritta could still change. I don’t think we _ever_ tried a bat.”

“No one tries a bat,” Matt laughs. His hand twitches and Fallon comes back to him, allowing him to stroke her ears.

“We tried dogs, of course,” Matt adds. “Dogs and-” _and wolves and panthers and any kind of animal with teeth and roaring blood_ “-stuff like that. But I don’t think Fallon could resist the irony of being a blind man’s bat daemon.”

That’s not why Fallon settled as a bat at all, and Foggy probably knows that. But Foggy is kind and thinks he knows how much crap Matt gets for his daemon, so he lets Matt force the joke anyway.

Foggy grins. “In sixth grade, Piritta was a pig for a _month._ Mom thought she was going to settle that way for sure _._ Turns out, Ritta was just trolling her about the whole butcher thing.”

Fallon huffs out a laugh. “ _Ritta_.”

“She wouldn’t get off our back about being a butcher,” Piritta giggles. “Thought maybe that would change her mind.”

“And did it?” Fallon asks.

“Nah,” Foggy says. “But it sure was funny. The look on her _face_ when she found out what Ritta was up to!”

Matt’s smile wanes when he realizes he doesn’t have a good story in response. Settling for him and Fallon was a -- a far different experience than it was for Foggy and Piritta.

 _You’re a cliché._ Matt swallows heavily.

Thankfully, Foggy is good at filling silences – and at not allowing Matt to get too stuck in his own head.

“So?” he says. “Dish! What’s it like having a flying daemon? Did you fear for her life when playing baseball -- or other sports with flying balls?”

“I’m _blind_ ,” Matt snorts. “We didn’t play baseball together, Foggy.”

He gives the question a moment of real thought, because Foggy seems genuinely curious. He closes his eyes. He remembers last month, when he stood on a rooftop as Fallon soared above the entire city. It’d been foolish to risk exposure like that, but he needed to blow off some steam after their latest exam.

It’d been worth it. Because when Fallon flies, the heat and noise of her wing make her as bright as a signal flare in Matt’s world on fire. The thrum of her heartbeat fills Matt’s chest until it feels ready to burst.

But he can’t tell Foggy that. The Matt Murdock Foggy knows is a perfectly average blind guy who has no sensory processing disorders and who certainly isn’t _separated._

“It’s nice,” Matt says finally.

It’s not an answer, not really. But by some miracle – maybe it’s the pressure of finals weighing down on them both, maybe Foggy’s just too tired to be nosy -- Foggy doesn’t press the issue. At the time, Matt is thankful for it.

But years later, when Matt is unmasked and bleeding out on his living room floor, when Fallon is screeching for Foggy to get help while Piritta asks what the _hell_ is going on-

Years later, Matt wishes that Foggy hadn’t left it there. Maybe if his friend had pushed more then – or maybe if Matt had been a better person and _trusted_ Foggy with this – they wouldn’t be where they are now: in Matt’s dark living room, where Foggy is uncovering his _lies._

Where Foggy is putting together the pieces of the fucked up puzzle that is Matt Murdock’s life.

It isn’t until nightfall that Foggy finally addresses the last piece of that puzzle. The one they’ve been avoiding talking about all day.

“That surveillance footage,” Foggy says, his voice hard. “Fallon wasn’t there. Where was she, Matt?”

“She was three blocks away,” Matt whispers. “I don’t do this with her. I don’t want her to get hurt. Or be recognized.”

Fallon buries her head in Matt’s chest. She trembles, unable to look at Foggy or Piritta. Matt has no clue what Piritta’s doing. For once, the Irish wolfhound daemon is still and silent.

“Jesus,” Foggy breathes. “You’re separated.”

Matt flinches, as if Foggy’s words were a sentencing rather than a simple truth. “Yes.”

He can hear how Foggy clutches at Piritta’s fur at the mere thought of separation – no, not at the thought of it, at the _reality_ of it. At Matt’s reality.

“How did you…? When? _Why?_ And throw in the other w’s while we’re at it, because what the _hell,_ Matt?” Foggy’s voice shakes. He sounds so _frightened,_ but Matt can’t tell if he’s scared of what happened to Matt or just scared of _Matt._

“W-when I was twelve,” Matt croaks. He wrinkles his nose when Fallon tries to wipe the tears off his face. He gently pushes her away. “The guy I told you about, Stick, he- it was a part of my training. We left Fallon in a warehouse – closed the windows so she couldn’t come after me – and I just…got on a bus heading in the other direction.”

The memory of that day hits Matt like a tidal wave, _burns_ in his chest just as their separation did. He pulls Fallon close to him again – _come back, I know I pushed you away just a second ago, but I_ need _you now._

Fallon pushes her head against his cheek, her forgiveness instantaneous.

“Matt, that’s…” The anger drains from Foggy’s voice, but now the sorrow is back – _I can’t believe I felt sorry for you_ – and no, Matt never _asked_ for this.

“Foggy, it’s not a big deal-”

“You could have him _arrested_. Fuck, you _should_ have him arrested, for what that son of a bitch did to you.”

Matt shakes his head. “It was necessary.”

Piritta finally moves. She purposefully moves her body between Foggy and Matt. “Necessary? How is this-” a nod of her head as she motions to Matt and Fallon “- _ever_ necessary?”

Matt wants to whine when Fallon leaves his chest to stand before Piritta. He think he actually does when Piritta _recoils_ from Fallon’s touch. Matt can’t see Fallon, but he can feel her heart _aching_ in his chest.

Fallon swallows heavily, shakes her head. “It was what we had to do,” she says. “Separation isn’t what everyone says. Yes, it hurts, but -- witches used to do it too-”

“When they were old enough to make that decision for _themselves-_ ”

“We _did_ make that decision for ourselves! We decided to _protect_ me, to protect _him_! You really think it’s a good idea to have your daemon next to you while you fight? It was _necessary_ -”

“It was abuse!” Piritta hisses.

Fallon lowers her wings. The tips drag against the ground. They probably make no sound to Foggy’s ears. But to Matt’s, it’s sandpaper against wood, a painful scratch and hiss that reverberates in his mind.

There’s salt in the air. It burns Matt’s nostrils. He can’t tell if they’re his tears or Foggy’s anymore.

Matt clears his throat. “Don’t you have anything to say?” he says to Foggy.

Foggy’s silent for a long minute. Finally, he whispers, “Why didn’t you tell me? You knew _everything_ about me, and I didn’t get to know this?”

“What was I supposed to say?”

“ _Anything._ Jesus, Matt. You shouldn’t have kept _any_ of this from me. Okay, maybe with your screwed up vigilante logic, hiding the senses thing made sense to you – but _Fallon_? You know how Piritta feels about her, and you just…didn’t tell us?”

Foggy is holding Piritta in his arms now. Matt wishes he could do the same to Fallon, but she’s still silent and dumbstruck on the floor.

“Two kinds of people get separated Foggy,” Matt says, the words sticking in his throat as he quotes them. “Witches or sociopaths. After knowing _everything_ about me, do you really think I don’t know which you have me pegged as?”

Foggy sighs, makes a motion at his face like he’s rubbing his eyes.

“You’re not a sociopath, Matt,” he says heavily, as he stands. “You’re just a fucking liar.”

Piritta moves purposefully around Fallon as she and Foggy leave. The casual touches that their daemons exchanged so easily before are nowhere to be found now.

Fallon gasps Piritta’s name and Matt whispers Foggy’s, but the slamming of a door still rings in their ears a moment later.

 

***

 

When they see each other again, Piritta won’t go near Fallon.

“She didn’t even _look_ at me,” Fallon whispers.

They’re lying on their bed now, ostensibly trying to squeeze in a nap before they begin their work tonight. In practice, they’re just waiting for darkness to fall. Sleep doesn’t come easily to them these days.

“She did,” Matt says quietly. “When you looked away, she turned her head toward you.”

“It’s not the same. She thinks I’m a _freak_.”

“No, she doesn’t. She and Foggy are just angry at us, that’s all.”

“Well they should be,” Fallon says, her voice choked with tears. “Everything is falling apart because of us. We were doing such _good,_ and now look at us. Look at our city.”

She’s right. When Matt is outside, when the wind is just right, he can still smell the ash and rubble of the buildings Fisk blew up. He shivers. “We’re not giving up yet.”

Fallon sighs. The sound cracks and breaks under the weight of their weariness. “Maybe Foggy was right about us.”

Matt shakes his head. His hands clench his silk sheets in a vice grip. “What are you talking about? We’re _fine,_ we _like_ being separated-”

“I like being separated, Matt, but that’s not what this feels like! It doesn’t _feel_ like we’re separated, it feels like we’re _separate_!”

Matt freezes. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” Fallon says miserably. “We’ve driven everyone away. We’re _alone._ And even though you’re right here, it’s like _I’m_ alone. Just a _vulnerability_ , a clichéd bat demon for a blind man. I’m just white noise.”

Matt picks up Fallon and hugs her gently, so _so_ gently to his chest. He whispers, “You’re not any of those things. You’re not white noise.”

“But you said-”

“I don’t give a shit about what I said. I didn’t mean it like that. And I don’t give a shit about what Stick said either – you’re not a weakness, Fallon. You’re a part of my body. You are not alone. We’re not _separate_.”

Fallon buries her head in Matt’s chest. “Then why does it _feel_ like we are?”

“I don’t know,” Matt gasps. He squeezes his eyes shut to block out the tears that keep threatening to drop. “I’m not trying to, but – but every time we fail, it feels like I’m slipping further away from you, Foggy, _everybody._ And if I fail again, if I lose _any_ more ground-- it feels like I won’t be able to sense any of you anymore.”

For a while, Fallon does nothing more than breathe. Her inhales and exhales are like a metronome for Matt, a way for him to keep track of his own breathing. Slowly, they calm, and their shuddering breaths fade into a stable tempo.

Finally, Fallon says, “Do you feel my heart, Matt?”

Matt takes another deep breath. He tunes out the rest of the city. He concentrates on her tiny heart fluttering against his – two mismatched rhythms meeting as one. Her tiny puffs of breath warm his skin, the membrane of her wings slide against him as she shifts.

“Yes,” he says.

“Did you hear Foggy’s heart earlier? And Piritta’s? And Karen’s, and Darwin’s?”

Matt nods.

“You can sense us just fine. We’re right here, Matt,” Fallon says, butting her head against him. The fur of her ears tickles his chest. “We’re not going to lose them – we’re not going to lose _each other_ – because we’re all right here, okay?”

Matt wipes his eyes. “I know. It just-”

“Doesn’t feel that way. I know. Sometimes it’s just fucking white noise. But we’re right here, you idiot. _I’m_ right here.”

Matt nods, presses their chests together again. He closes his eyes as Fallon’s pulse pounds against his, until he finally falls asleep.

 

***

 

Foggy doesn’t forgive him. But he talks about moving forward, and Piritta looks Fallon in the eye when he says it, and that’s good enough for Matt.

He knows that he hasn’t earned anything more than that, but when Fisk escapes his armored car and Matt finds himself scrambling for a cab, he forces himself to ask it of Foggy anyway.

“Trust me,” Matt pleads. “Trust me and Fallon. We know what we have to do.”

Foggy’s heart rate increases at Matt’s words. Piritta stands before Matt, tensing as though she’s ready to snatch Fallon right out of Matt’s hands. Trust or not, _forgiveness_ or not, Foggy and Piritta care about Matt, don’t want him to fight.

But Matt’s a fighter in his soul, and that’s something Foggy has probably known long before he figured out the rest.

“Both of you?” Foggy finally says.

“We’re in this together,” Matt says. “Always have been.”

“I know,” Foggy sighs, but he’s nodding. “Yeah, I know. All right, you two. Go be heroes.”

“Just don’t get killed doing it!” Piritta calls after them as they hurry into a cab.

Matt’s never needed permission to fight, but Foggy and Piritta’s feels like a blessing washing over him. It thrums in his veins as he dons his armor, as he searches for Fisk.

It doesn’t take long to find him. Fisk’s heart is pounding, and Matt can pick out the smell of his Komodo dragon daemon from blocks away.

“You brought your daemon for once,” Fisk roars when he sees them. “That was a mistake.”

Matt grins, and he and Fallon get to work. They are ferocious, tenacious, blurs in the night as they take hits and dole them out in turn. Maybe a bat isn’t a warrior’s daemon, but Fallon is all of Matt’s fury and righteousness, all of his skill and determination.

Fisk falls, and Matt breathes, and Fallon stands by his side through it all.

That also means that when Brett pulls up in his police car, he sees her. But Matt’s done hiding. He’s done being a daemonless monster to the people he’s trying to protect.

“What should I call you?” Brett asks. He hasn’t stopped glancing at Fallon since he arrived, but the steady thud of his heartbeat means that he hasn’t made the connection between the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen and Matt Murdock. And why would he? Matt’s small, ordinary bat daemon probably looks nothing like the blood-stained creature of the night that circles them from above.

Matt smirks, and leaps into the air. He’s halfway up the fire escape before he calls down, “Anything but Batman will do.”

He jumps and flips across rooftops until he’s several blocks away, and then he _laughs._ Even as Fallon’s wings beat unsteadily from her wounds, even as the copper and sawdust stench of his own blood fills his noise, he can’t stop laughing.

The next day, Karen holds up a newspaper proclaiming him to be Daredevil, and Foggy mutters that Daredevil must have run from the scene “like a bat out of hell.”

And Matt laughs again. Fallon nips at his ear, trying to shush him while they’re still in front of Karen, but Matt only laughs all the harder.

 

***

 

“Like listening to the radio, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Foggy’s silent for a long stretch of time. It’s that quiet, liminal time of morning, when their computers are humming and ready, but the first pot of coffee hasn’t quite finished brewing. Karen’s heels click from four blocks away – for once Matt and Foggy beat her to the office.

“We need to work on your metaphors, buddy,” Foggy finally says.

Matt snorts. “Claire pretty much said the same thing.”

“I _knew_ she seemed reasonable. Or as reasonable as anyone _can_ be to try to keep up with you.”

Matt winces. Fallon’s ears twitch, but she doesn’t return to Matt’s lap. She’s sitting on the floor next to Piritta. It’s a good first step, even if Fallon still forces herself to remain a respectful distance away from the Irish wolfhound.

“Foggy-” Matt starts.

“I’m not interested in the Catholic guilt, Murdock.”

“It was just going to be regular best friend guilt, actually,” Matt says, lips twitching.

“Eh, rain check,” Foggy yawns. “Save the guilt for when I can appreciate it. Or at least for when I’m not falling asleep at my desk.”

“The coffee’s been done for about a minute.”

“That’s not that special, you know. I can smell burnt coffee too.” Nonetheless, Foggy hoists himself out of his chair to check the pot.

When he returns, two cups of coffee in hand, he asks, “Do you hear it now? The white noise, or the radio static or whatever?”

“It’s not _literal_ white noise,” Matt protests, laughing when Foggy kicks at his chair and misses.

“I know that, but you give me nothing but metaphors to work with! Give me a non-metaphoric way to ask my blind, separated superhero friend how he’s doing, and I’ll say that.”

“‘How are you doing,’ works pretty nicely, from what I’ve heard.”

“Not with you,” Foggy reminds Matt. And that’s what it is – it’s not a jab, it’s not a guilt-trip, it’s not an accusation. It’s a reminder: _you keep everything in, and that’s not okay, not when me and Piritta and Fallon are right here._

“I mean it, Matt,” Foggy says. “I want to know if you’re okay. So, come on, play along with me: how’s the white noise today?”

Matt takes a sip of his coffee, listens. Sometime while Matt and Foggy were talking, Piritta had forced Fallon on top of her paws. Matt can hear the wet, cool rasp of Piritta’s tongue as she gives Fallon an absent lick before going back to snoring in her ears. Fallon’s breathy huff gives way to a sigh of contentment. She nuzzles against Piritta’s paws, and the shifting of fur whispers in Matt’s ears.

Matt lets his eyes slip shut. There are a million tiny noises in their office, and by now, Matt has cataloged them all. Listening to them now, to the cacophony of routine sounds, feels like comfort, like home, like absolution.

“Not bad,” Matt says finally.

 


End file.
